Allison's Favorite Pasta Dinner

1 bag frozen cheese-filled tortellini or ravioli
1 jar spaghetti sauce (homemade, Ragu, whatever)
2 chicken brats - in the lunch & breakfast meat section by the regular brats
Shredded mozzarella

Spray a 9x13 pan with vegetable oil. Dump in the tortellini (frozen) and the sauce. Slice brats and layer on top. Sprinkle on mozzarella. I like to do this part in the morning so all I have to do at night is put it in the oven. Bake at 350 for 30 minutes or so, until bubbly. Serve with garlic bread and ignore the children when they say they don't like it.

For some variety, try it with ground beef or mixed vegetables - or just plain. Yummy.

Yoga?

We're on day forty-something of school, and I still haven't figured out how to get the kids settled down and ready to learn in less than a couple of hours. We've given up on mornings for the time being. Right now, we're doing school from noon - 4, with free reading and reading aloud in the morning. Strangely, they were very calm by afternoon when we started in the morning, but when we start in the afternoon, they're still wound up. I tried yoga for a couple of days on the Wii with them, but I think the poses were too difficult - and the living room is too small. I've been looking at sites on yoga for kids, and some of them are pretty cool. I think that 10 - 20 minutes of yoga in the morning, even for kids who are going off to a regular school, sounds like a great (easy? quick?) way to get focused and energized for the day. If you're really brave, you could even email some of these links to your kids' teachers to see if they're open to trying it. Here are some of the links I've found that show different yoga poses (some specifically for kids, some for all ages):

http://www.susankramer.com/Yoga.html#Moving (yoga poses for kids)

http://www.yogasite.com/postures.html (yoga poses for all ages)

http://www.musicalyogaadventures.com/?p=routines_for_cd (neat! you can play songs that go along with each pose!)

http://yogainmyschool.com/yoga-101/poses/alphabetical-list-of-poses/ (yoga poses for kids)

http://yogakids.com/about-pose-of-the-week.htm (get a pose each week by email or Facebook)

Surely there are a bunch of videos on You Tube too, but I haven't got time to check it today. Let me know if you find any other good resources, and I'll keep you posted on how yoga works for us.

New Teaching Tools

I'm determined to make this blog a good resource for other homeschoolers, not just a place where I dump a few random thoughts each day. So...here are a few of my favorite discoveries so far this school year:

Carol's Affordable Curriculum - an awesome Christian preschool curriculum for kids as young as 18 months. It costs about $12 per month per child and is SO worth it. She puts all of the supplies you'll need for all of the crafts in the box for you, which means that those of us who are incapable of planning lessons more than an hour in advance can still feel super prepared and organized. And if you just can't handle the teaching portion of it, you can simply throw a few of the worksheets at your child and tell her to color within the lines and she'll be happy.

Math Wrap-Ups - I can't explain this very well, so you'll have to click the link to see the photo. You wrap the string around the plastic key to match up the numbers that correctly complete the math problem. WAY WAY WAY better for Isaac than flash cards, which everyone in my house hates.

Spelling Power - I absolutely despised this at first because it seemed so complicated, but I think my kids are actually learning to spell, which wasn't happening with the traditional spelling method. Our book is pretty old (because the old ones are cheap!), but it's pretty timeless too. Kids learn a 10-step study process that really seems to work, and they keep testing on each word until they spell it correctly. I like that this focuses on the words your kid can't spell, rather than treating all words the same. I think it's less frustrating. For everyone.

Tales of the Kingdom Trilogy - These are allegorical; they're a metaphor for the story of God, Jesus, and salvation. We LOVE them. We being Isaac and me. I think they're a little bit over the other kids' heads, but they'll still sit quietly and listen and look at the pictures. They're very well-written, and each chapter can stand alone somewhat with it's own storyline and message. I could see us re-reading these for several years to come.

Character Sketches - I don't own this one, but a mom in my homeschool group used it to teach a lesson to our kids a couple of weeks ago and it was very cool. It's actually a three-volume series that uses different animals to illustrate different character traits, so kids learn about animals and biblical virtues at the same time. We learned about some kind of bird, which demonstrated loyalty; and bees, which demonstrated responsibility. I'd say this is a middle-school-aged book, but again, it has awesome illustrations that littler kids would enjoy.

Just think about it

There is something that I haven't done in almost two months that I had done almost every day for the past ten years. What is it, you ask? Cook? Nope. Vacuum? Ha! Nope. Blog? Okay, well, yes, but something else too. I haven't used my clothes dryer since early in August. We've been hanging everything up to dry in the basement, and it's actually been pretty convenient. Things aren't as wrinkled as I thought they'd be (no extra ironing, really!), and it only takes a day for nearly everything to dry. I started out thinking I'd still dry some things, like work shirts for John and underwear, but we truly haven't dried anything - not even sheets or towels - for weeks. I think it's been saving us money, too, because our electric bill for last month was only $20. I'm not sure whether I could handle this while working full time, but once you get the hang of it (sorry, awful pun), hanging stuff up goes pretty quickly. Isn't drying hard on clothes, too? If that's true, then we're probably eventually saving money on clothes too. Between this and the homemade laundry soap, I feel kind of like a pioneer woman every time I wash clothes. If I start talking about unplugging the washer and buying a washboard, please stop me.

Yes, we are still alive

I haven't posted anything in forever. I know that's breaking the number one rule of blogging, but it's been busy around here, darn it. We've had three adult kids move in and then out again, school has started, Grace is mobile, several million tomatoes have been processed, a paper route has been started and abandoned, my french bread recipe has been perfected, and Christmas knitting has begun. I don't know where to begin again, so I'll begin with this: when you have to choose between living your life and writing about it, choose living it. You can always write about it later, perhaps even with some sort of perspective that comes after time has passed. Something of substance will be coming tomorrow - I have a bunch of resources and photos to share. Should I promise tomorrow? Let's say "this week" instead.